Student sues cops after being pinned to ground because they suspected him of stealing a car that belonged to him.

A dash-cam video released earlier this week showed Evanston, Illinois police tackling and beating a Black Northwestern University doctoral student after they suspected him of stealing a car that belonged to him, reports The Washington Post.

Pinned to the ground by officers who kneed and struck him, Lawrence Crosby screamed whatever he could think of to convince them that he was a law-abiding PhD student, not a violent car thief…

Police released the dash-cam video earlier this week, detailing the half-hour encounter [on Oct. 10, 2015] that sparked a civil lawsuit from Crosby and a discussion about race and policing in this city of 75,000, just north of Chicago…

[Police] determine[d] [the car was] his, but he was still arrested and charged with disobeying officers and resisting arrest. A judge later threw out the charges, Crosby’s attorney Tim Touhy, told the Chicago Tribune. The officers were never charged or disciplined…The release of the video comes amid an ongoing national debate about whether officers are too quick to use force, especially against minorities. In 2015, the year of Crosby’s encounter, 991 people were shot dead by police in the United States. Last year, 963 were killed.

An Evanston police spokesman acknowledged that parts of the video are “problematic” and that the department is making changes as a result, reports the Chicago Sun-Times.